A Friendly Phantom
In the elevator of Grant, there is a neglected fire department telephone box with a little door on it. Where there used to be the guts of a small telephone system, now there is just an empty box. The current occupants of the box are usually candies, mints, snacks, or sometimes even fruit – a gift for Gus. The culture surrounding theaters has many superstitions and most theaters even have a resident ghost. When a theater is not in use a single light bulb on a stand – called a ghost light – located in the middle of the stage often occupies the space. This single light is meant to illuminate the stage for the resident ghosts so they don’t trip or get confused in the darkness. While ghost lights can be found on the stages of Weisiger Theater and Newlin Hall in the Norton Center for the Arts, the ghost of Centre College’s theater, called Gus, prefers gifts. In order to keep Gus benevolent students and faculty alike will leave candy in the elevator telephone box as an offering. The candy always disappears, sometimes within hours sometimes over the course of a day. The one rule: don’t take Gus’ candy, and if there is none provide more.
One night the Technical Director (TD) of the theater department was using the elevator on his way to a meeting and snagged a mint from the telephone box. A few seconds later the elevator stopped abruptly. No matter what the TD did the elevator would not move nor would the doors open. For about 15-minutes the TD was stuck inside the elevator unable to get out. “Mostly I was annoyed that I was potentially going to be late for my meeting and stuck in the elevator, but I did have a giggle that it was right after I took Gus’ mint that the elevator stopped. I thought it was pretty funny,” the TD recalled.1 After calling for outside help he was finally freed, but to this day warns his students never to take Gus’ candy.
Although the most popular location for Gus is the elevator, his playful haunting happens in other places as well. Grant Hall and the Norton Center have multiple storage facilities and technical spaces where there have been various accounts of lights turning off suddenly with no one near the light switch or headsets turning on and off that should not be able to do so by themselves. Lights often flicker in rooms throughout the building and sometimes the elevator will move without anyone using it or pressing any buttons. In Weisiger Theater students have recalled seeing shadowy figures and hearing footsteps on the stage when no one was around. In addition to the elevator, Gus haunts the former U-shaped room located in the basement of Grant which was renovated in 2010. A current Centre College Professor of Theater Matthew Hallock, recalled how the lights would randomly turn off when people were inside the room and there were multiple times when “people got locked in the room from the outside when no one else was in that part of the building.”2 Gus as a mischievous ghostly figure makes Grant Hall a place that is alive.
Gus’ origin story and those of other spirits that may haunt the building are unknown. While most theaters have resident ghosts and Gus could be just that, there are other theories as well. One theory states that while the Norton Center was being built in the early 1970s, a construction worker fell down the elevator shaft and died. Now his unhappy spirit haunts the building. Additionally, prior to Centre’s purchase of the building in 1960, the area of the current Norton Center was the site of the old Danville High School from 1918 to 1963. While current research does not yield any stories that may explain the strange occurrences in the Norton Center, perhaps the spirit of a mischievous wayward high school student continues to roam the grounds.
“Ghosts are much of what makes a space a place.”3 Place can be defined as a physical location but also as a memory or a feeling – a ghost. It is a concept that we use to give meaning to a location. Gus’ mischievous energy that haunts Grants Hall gives this place a meaning. A theater is a place where things are constantly in motion. A show is planned, rehearsed, performed, and closed soon followed by another. In contrast to performances that happen in a heartbeat, Gus is a constant, a being that is continuously inhabiting the place. His presence changes the way that people behave and interact with the space. Students will avoid taking the elevator or bring mints to appease Gus. As someone who has spent significant time in Grant, I am always cautious about the way that I treat the space so that Gus does not do anything to me, playful or otherwise. I always make sure that I put things back in their appropriate spots, not be too loud, and never say something bad about Gus. The knowledge students and other campus members have of Gus shapes them to behave a certain way toward the space; with a respect that creates trust. Trust that if I don’t take Gus’ candy he won’t bother me. People identify these patterns of behavior in each other which creates a community.
While there is a draw to Centre’s campus that revolves around its reputation as an academically rigorous institution with high performing and extremely involved students, the paranormal at Centre College pushes us to approach the institution with an air of respect. While spaces such as Grant Hall and many others are treated with apprehensive respect due to the energies and spirits that occupy the place, this respect for place becomes a norm with which the entirety of campus conforms to. Centre College as a whole is a community that respects spaces and the people that occupy them. It is also important to note that this community of respect breeds an environment of trust. For example, students leave personal items in public spaces without the fear of them being stolen. The ghost story of Gus, and many others on campus teach us the consequences of not respecting others and their space. The way in which those who frequent Grant Hall know to respect Gus, his space, and his candy, this message persists throughout campus and teaches us to recognize the community of respect we manifest and inhabit.
-Naomi Ferrell
Bibliography
Bell, Michael. “The Ghosts of Place.” Theory and Society Vol. 26, No. 6 (Dec. 1997) 818.
Capps, Kyle. Blewett, Aidan. A Ghost in the Elevator: History 470. 05:12.
Centre College, Centre Encyclopedia. https://sc.centre.edu/ency/n/norton_center.html
Ferrell, Naomi. Hallock, Matthew. A Friendly Phantom: History 470. 10:09.
Fisher, James (2015). Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Beginnings. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Rowman and Littlefield. p. 191
Graham Posner (Technical Director) in conversation with Naomi Ferrell, January 2021.
Endnotes
(1) Graham Posner (Technical Director) in conversation with Naomi Ferrell, 27 January 2021.
(2) Ferrell, Naomi. Hallock, Matthew. A Friendly Phantom: History 470. 10:09.
(3) Bell, Michael. “The Ghosts of Place.” Theory and Society Vol. 26, No. 6 (Dec. 1997) 818.